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Who's Who - Wilfred Stokes

Frederick Wilfred Scott Stokes
(1860-1927) was the inventor of the simple but highly effective Stokes
mortar, which became the standard British mortar of the First World War.

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A civil engineer and
inventor, Stokes was Chairman and Managing Director of Ransomes & Rapier, an
engineering company based in Ipswich which chiefly manufactured cranes.

Although Stokes' names
became synonymous with the most renowned mortar of World War One he only
began experimenting with its design towards the close of 1914, once war had
actually begun. It is a testament to the brilliant simplicity of his
design that it acquired immediate renown.

The British were at that
time keen to develop a match for the
German
mortars (minenwerfers) in use against the French in the east (and soon
afterwards against the British themselves on the Western Front).

The mortar was by no means
a new weapon, although it had fallen out of usage since the Napoleonic era.
Indeed, in the interim while the British and French hastened to construct
new mortars they resorted to using century old stocks of the weapon.

Curiously, Stokes' design
was initially rejected in June 1915 on the grounds that it was unable to
utilise existing British mortar ammunition. It required the combined
intervention of
David Lloyd George (then Minister of Munitions) and Lieutenant-Colonel
J.C. Matheson of the Trench Warfare Supply Department (reporting to Lloyd
George) to push through manufacture of the Stokes mortar.
Douglas Haig was
another early admirer of the weapon.

It consisted chiefly of a
smooth metal tube fixed to a base plate (to absorb recoil) with a light
bi-pod mount. When a bomb was dropped into the tube an impact
sensitive cartridge at the base of the bomb would make contact with a firing
pin at the base of the tube, thereby ejecting the bomb.

3-inches in size the
cast-iron mortar bomb itself weighed around 4.5 kg. It was fitted with
a modified hand grenade fuse on the front, with a perforated tube (with
minor propellant charge) and impact-sensitive cap at the back.

The
Stokes mortar could fire as many as 22 bombs per minute and had a maximum
range of 1,200 yards. Most mortars in use today are direct descendants
of the Stokes mortar.

Stokes himself was
subsequently knighted in recognition of the success of his invention.
He died in 1927.